The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The reader of Albert Schweitzer's “History of the Life-Jesu Research” (from Reimarus to Wrede, 1906) and other writings by the same author must consider him to be a very sharp thinker. For someone who wants to use his thoughts to penetrate into areas of intellectual life that many others consider inaccessible to thought and only reachable through emotional, mystical or religious experience.

One therefore eagerly seizes upon the recently published first part of a “Philosophy of Culture” by Albert Schweitzer, entitled “Decay and Rebuilding of Culture” (Paul Haupt, Academic Bookshop Bern, 1923).

Right from the first pages, we encounter a description of the feelings evoked by the signs of decay in today's “culture”. The lack of a way of thinking that takes hold of the spirituality of the world is thoroughly felt and characterized with cutting sharpness. The words of criticism fall like cutting knives on the entire face of contemporary life.

The first sentence is: “We are under the sign of the decline of culture.” This sets the tone. And from its continuation we hear: “We abandoned culture because there was no reflection on culture among us.”... “So we crossed the threshold of the century with unshakable illusions about ourselves.”... “Now it is clear to everyone that the self-destruction of culture is underway.”... “The Enlightenment and rationalism had established ethical rational ideals about the development of the individual into true humanity, about his position in society, about its material and spiritual tasks...” ... ”But around the middle of the nineteenth century, this confrontation of ethical rational ideals with reality began to decline. In the course of the following decades, it increasingly came to a standstill. The abdication of culture took place without a fight and without a sound...

Schweitzer believes he sees the reason for this. In earlier worldviews, ethical ideals of reason lay in the same sources as thoughts about nature. These worldviews saw a spiritual world behind nature. And from this spiritual world, impulses flowed into the facts of nature; but so did ethical ideals of reason into the human soul. There was a “total worldview.” This does not exist today. The thoughts of the new worldview can only speak of forces in natural phenomena, but not of ethical goals of the human soul.

Schweitzer sees only a powerless philosophy within this situation, and this is to blame for the decline. “That thinking did not manage to create a worldview of optimistic-ethical character and to found the ideals that make up culture in such a worldview was not the fault of philosophy, but a fact that arose in the development of thinking. But philosophy was guilty of our world because it did not admit the fact and remained in the illusion that it was really maintaining a progress of culture.” ... ”So little philosophy philosophized about culture that it did not even notice how it itself, and the time with it, became more and more cultureless. In the hour of danger, the guard who was supposed to keep us awake slept. And so it came about that we did not struggle for our culture."

Schweitzer points out that institutions in the external world, on which modern humanity relies, cannot stop the decay of culture. He is clear that all material life, if it is to develop into culture, must radiate from the independent creations of spiritual life. He finds that people of the present time, because they have lost themselves in the material world around them, have become unfree, unsummoned in their thinking, incomplete in the development of their full humanity, and humanitarian in their ethical behavior. The institutions of life appear to him to be over-organized, because the initiative of the individual is inhibited by the harnessing into the organizations, which everywhere want to absorb the individual into an abstract, impersonal general.

The fact that trust in the creative power of the thinking mind has vanished is characterized by Schweitzer in the most diverse ways. “In the past, every scientist was also a thinker who meant something in the general intellectual life of his generation. Our time has arrived at the ability to distinguish between science and thinking. That is why we still have freedom of science, but almost no thinking science.” In the souls of thinkers, in Schweitzer's sense, the impulses must arise that have an effect on all material cultural events. ”Kant and Hegel have ruled millions who have never read a line from them and did not even know that they were obeying them.” ... “That the Roman Empire, despite the many outstanding rulers it had, perished, was ultimately because ancient philosophy produced no worldview with empire-preserving ideas.” ... “For the whole as well as for the individual, life without a worldview is a pathological disturbance of the higher sense of orientation.”

I must now shape the rest of these remarks in such a way that I expose myself to the danger of being considered an imagined drip by many. But in view of my conviction about the things that Albert Schweitzer discusses, there is no other way.

Let us assume that someone wants to build a house and one asks them: how should it be designed? He answers: solid, weatherproof, beautiful and such that one can live comfortably in it. You won't be able to do much with this answer. You will have to design a concrete plan and well-founded forms. Albert Schweitzer sees through the dilapidation of “contemporary culture”. He asks himself: what should the structure of a new one be like? He answers: “The great task of the mind is to create a worldview.” “The future of culture thus depends on whether thought is capable of arriving at a worldview that embraces optimism, that is, an affirmation of the world and of life, and that possesses ethics more securely and more fundamentally than those that have existed to date.” Well, you can't do much with this answer either. Anthroposophy perceives the negative in ‘contemporary culture’ in a similar way to Schweitzer. She may express this less loudly and less forcefully; but she answers the observed with a spiritual insight that leads human thinking from the legitimate demands of the view of nature to a rootedness in the living spiritual world. In this spiritual world, ethical ideals have a force effect again, as in the field of nature, the forces of nature.

Schweitzer believes that modern thinking shies away from penetrating into the spiritual and leaves this field to thought-free mysticism. “But why,” he says, “assume that the path of thinking ends before mysticism?” He wants a thinking that is so alive that it can penetrate into the regions that many assign to mysticism. Now, anthroposophy lives entirely in such thinking and in such a relationship to mysticism. Schweitzer finds: “How much would be gained for today's conditions if we all just looked up thoughtfully at the infinite worlds of the starry sky for three minutes every evening and, when attending a funeral, would surrender to the mystery of death and life...” One can see how anthroposophy relates to this.

Schweitzer characterizes all this as someone who says: I want a house that is solid, weatherproof, beautiful and so on that one can live comfortably in it. Anthroposophy does not want to remain in these abstractions, but to design the concrete building plan.

Anyone who delves into Central European literature from the mid-nineteenth century can make a remarkable discovery. However, they will only do so if they do not limit themselves to what remained popular in the following period and what is usually reprinted and widely read as valuable in the present day. For there is something like a layer of Central European views, buried by the way of thinking of later times, which today seems quite alien in tone, attitude and interest in certain circles of ideas.

By reading the works of this buried layer, one can conjure up images of personalities with a way of thinking that is completely foreign to the present day. Incidentally, I had the good fortune to be in lively intellectual contact with my old teacher and friend Karl Julius Schröer in the 1880s, a personality who, in terms of his state of mind, was rooted entirely in the life of the mid-nineteenth century. An idealizing magic emanated from this personality. When Karl Julius Schröer spoke of Goethe, something of the buried layer came to life.

I have an image from my association with Karl Julius Schröer before me. I visited him a few hours after the Austrian Crown Prince perished in the tragedy of Meyerling. Karl Julius Schröer stood as if frozen by what could happen in an age that he felt had become so unlike his own. His eyes looked as if they were gazing out at a foreign world, and he said, “It is as if the age of Nero had returned.”

Schröer himself attributed his dissimilarity to the younger generation to personal disposition. He once told me - without, however, admitting that he was a follower of phrenology: a phrenologist had examined him a long time ago and found a peculiarity in his head when he pronounced the word “theosophy”. (I leave the content of this remark to those who want to come to the conclusion that my anthroposophical view is a revival of a “provincial” part of my soul life, explainable to a psychoanalyst, which was cultivated in the 1880s by Karl Julius Schröer).

In this submerged stratum there lived an understanding for objective ideas. It was believed that such objective ideas held sway in the life of the individual and in the life of nations. But there was also a sense of intellectual sorrow at the dwindling sense for this objective idealism in European civilization. Thus one felt confronted with the reality of a spiritual world; one adhered to it. The outer world was taken as a kind of reflection of a spiritual reality. By delving into this older time, one can see personalities emerging who, from their spiritual perspective, describe the fate of the subsequent period as in a remarkable spiritual vision.

One such personality is Ernst von Lasaulx, who lived and worked in Munich around the middle of the nineteenth century. One should read his book: “New Attempt at an Ancient Philosophy of History Founded on the Truth of Facts” (Munich 1856). This book is imbued throughout with a spiritual way of looking at things. Sensory and historical reality is judged everywhere from the point of view of the spiritual. The rise and decline of nations are illuminated with the light gained from spiritual knowledge. And one reads what Lasaulx writes about the future based on his assessment of the present. “There is no doubt that the languages of almost all European nations, with the exception of those of the Slavic tongue, are fully developed and in some cases already noticeably depleted; nor is there any doubt that the religious consciousness of the past, valued on the whole, is no longer growing but dying: as it is an obvious fact that far beyond the borders of Europe, the inner progressive development in all still existing world-historical religions of the people, in Mosaicism, in Buddhism, in Mohammedanism, has long since passed its peak, and that in all three not merely a return to the past, but an undeniable decline has occurred. And what about Christianity, in its inner theoretical development and in its outer practical exercise in Europe?"

After raising such questions and visualizing the state of Europe, Lasaulx comes to the following gloomy conclusion. He reflects on the fate of southern, western and central Europe and continues: “... and that finally the Nordic colossus, too, seems to rest on feet of clay and, in the upper layers of lies and inner rottenness, is badly corroded before it matures: anyone who seriously considers this and the like will hardly be able to ward off the dark foreboding that always precedes the onset of great catastrophes.

But Lasaulx is situated in a perspective of intellectual knowledge. And in this perspective, he does not merely speak pessimistically; but surprisingly prophetically at the end of his other book, “The Decline of Hellenism”: “And when the threatening fate of the future is fulfilled and the fateful hour of a last great struggle between nations in Europe comes, there can be no reasonable doubt that here too final victory will only be where the greater power of faith prevails.”

Is there not more understanding of the present in such a personality of the buried layers than in many an influential spirit of this present time? More understanding for what is decaying, more for what is needed for ascent. And Lasaulx is only one representative; one could point out many in his way.

The question arises before the soul: why has this way of thinking been buried?

It was never a popular way of thinking; it remained that of an exquisite minority. It was rooted in the mind, but only in the general feeling. It knew only how to express itself in an intellectualistic way. It got stuck in abstract concepts that cannot warm the heart of man. It spoke of the spirit, but it did not arrive at views of the spirit. She did not grasp the whole, full human being; she only grasped the education of the head. The world therefore rejected this way of thinking and adhered to the sensory-apparent and the historical-external. And so it came about that the prophecies of the personalities from the buried layer were so remarkably true, their popular sphere of influence so small, that they could be forgotten.

But anthroposophy can remind us of them. It wants to assert the spiritual world as the firm foundation of all civilization, not in abstraction, but through the mediation of living insights; it wants to speak not only to the head man, but to the whole, full humanity. It does not want to convey intellectualistic insights, but real spiritual ones that can stand in reality with vital strength.

There are many reasons why anthroposophy is misunderstood; one of them is the fact that we are buried under layers of misconceptions. We must begin by working through the materialistic conceptions that are so strong because they have developed in opposition to a way of thinking that was spiritual but one-sidedly intellectual. People believe themselves justified in dismissing all spirituality with this one-sidedness.

A Christmas memory

Almost forty years ago, about two or three days before Christmas, my dear teacher and fatherly friend Karl Julius Schröer told me in his small library room on Vienna's Salesianergasse about the Christmas plays that he had attended in Oberufer in western Hungary in the 1850s and published in Vienna in 1862.

The German colonists of this area brought these plays with them from more western regions and continued to perform them every year around Christmas in the old manner. They preserve true gems of German folk theater from a time that predates the very first emergence of the modern stage.

There was something in Schröer's narrative that gave an immediate sense of how, in the sight of the plays, a piece of sixteenth-century folklore stood before his soul. And he described it from the full. He had grown fond of German folklore in the various Austro-Hungarian regions. Two areas were the subject of his particular study. This folklore and Goethe. And when he spoke about anything from these two areas, it was not a scholar who spoke, but a whole person who only used his erudition to express what connected him personally to it with all his heart and intense sense of purpose.

And so he spoke at the time about the rural Christmas games. The poor people of Oberufer, who trained as actors every year around Christmas time for their fellow villagers, came to life from his words. Schröer knew the nature of these people. He did everything he could to get to know them. He traveled around the Hungarian highlands to study the language of the Germans in this area of northern Hungary. He is the author of a “Dictionary of the German Dialects of the Hungarian Highlands” (1858) and a “Description of the German Dialects of the Hungarian Highlands” (1864). You don't have to particularly enjoy reading dictionaries to be captivated by these books. The outer garment of the presentation has nothing attractive at first. Schröer seeks to do justice to the scientific approach of German studies of his time. And this approach also appears quite dry at first in his work. But if you overcome this dryness and engage with the spirit that prevails when Schröer shares words, expressions, puns, and so on from the vernacular dialects, you will perceive revelations of the purest humanity in truly charming miniature images. But you don't even have to rely on that. Because Schröer precedes his dictionaries and grammatical lists with prefaces that provide the broadest cultural-historical outlooks. A rare and sensible personality falls in love with popular customs, interspersed with other popular customs and on the verge of extinction within the same, and describes them as one would describe a dusk.

And out of this love, Schröer also wrote a dictionary of the Heanzen dialect of western Hungary and one of the very small German language island of Gottschee in Krain.

There was always something of a tragic undertone when Schröer expressed what he felt when he looked at this declining folk life, which he wanted to preserve in the form of science.

But this feeling intensified to an intimate warmth when he spoke of the Oberufer Christmas plays. A respected family kept them and passed them on from generation to generation as a sacred treasure. The oldest member of the family was the teacher, who inherited the art of playing from his ancestors. Every year, after the grape harvest, he selected the boys from the village whom he considered suitable as players. He taught them the game. During their apprenticeship, they had to endeavor to live up to the seriousness of the matter. And they had to faithfully submit to everything the teacher prescribed. For in this teacher lived a time-honored tradition.

The performances that Schröer saw were in an inn. But both the players and the audience brought the warmest Christmas spirit into the house – and this mood is rooted in a genuine, pious devotion to the Christmas truth. Scenes that inspire the noblest edification alternate with bawdy, humorous ones. These do not detract from the seriousness of the whole. They only prove that the plays date from a time when the piety of the people was so deeply rooted in the mind that it could perfectly well coexist with naive, folksy merriment. For example, the pious love with which the heart was given to the baby Jesus did not suffer when a somewhat clumsy Joseph was placed next to the wonderfully delicately drawn Virgin; or when the intimately characterized sacrifice of the shepherds was preceded by their rough conversation and droll jokes. Those who originated the plays knew that the contrast with coarseness does not diminish, but rather increases, the heartfelt edification of the people. One can admire the art that draws the most beautiful mood of pious emotion from laughter, and precisely by doing so keeps away dishonest sentimentality.

In writing this, I am describing the impression I received after Schröer, to illustrate his story, took out the little book from his library in which he had shared the Christmas plays and from which he now read me samples. He was able to point out how one or the other player behaved in facial expression and gesture when saying this or that. Schröer now gave me the little book (“Deutsche Weihnachtspiele aus Ungern”, described and shared by Karl Julius Schröer. Vienna 1862); and after I had read it, I was often able to ask him about many things related to the folk's way of playing and their whole conception of this particular way of celebrating Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany.

In his introduction to the plays, Schröer writes: “Near Pressburg, half an hour's drive away, on an island off the island of Schütt, lies the village of Oberufer, whose lords are the Palfy family. Both the Catholic and Protestant communities there belong to the Pressburg parishes and have their services in the city. A village schoolmaster for both communities is also a notary, and so all the honorifics of the village are united in one person. He is hostile to the games and despises them, so that to this day they have been ignored and completely isolated from all “intellectuals” by farmers and performed for farmers. Religion makes no difference, Catholics and Protestants take equal parts, in the presentation as well as in the spectator seats. The players, however, belong to the same tribe, known as the Haidbauern, who, in the 16th or early 17th century, immigrated from the area around Lake Constance” – in a footnote, Schröer points out that this is not entirely certain – ”and were said to have been still entirely Protestant in 1659.” — “In Oberufer, the owner of the games has been a farmer since 1827. He had already played the angel Gabriel as a boy, then inherited the art from his father, who was then the ‘master teacher’ of the games. He had inherited the writings, the clothing and other equipment purchased and maintained at the expense of the players, and so the teaching position was also passed on to him.” When the time for practicing comes, “they copy, learn, sing day and night. In the village, no music is tolerated. When the players go across the country to play in a neighboring village and there is music there, they move on. When the village musicians were once played in one village in their honor, they indignantly asked if they were considered comedians?” “The plays now last from the first Sunday in Advent to Twelfth Night. There is a performance every Sunday and holiday; every Wednesday there is a performance for practice. On the other weekdays, the players travel to neighboring villages to perform.” — ‘I consider it important to mention these circumstances because they show how a certain consecration is still associated with the event today.’

And when Schröer spoke about the plays, his words still had an echo of this consecration.

I had to keep what I learned from Schröer in my heart. And now members of the Anthroposophical Society have been performing these plays at Christmas time for a number of years. During the war they were also allowed to perform them for the sick in the military hospitals. We have also been playing them every Christmas season at the Goetheanum in Dornach for many years. This year will be no exception. As far as possible under the changed circumstances, strict attention is paid to the fact that the way the plays are performed and presented gives the audience a picture of what it was like for those who kept these plays in the folk mind and regarded them as a worthy way to celebrate Christmas.

Almost half a century has passed since the Austrian literary historian Karl Julius Schröer wrote his book “Die deutsche Dichtung des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts” (Nineteenth Century German Poetry). In it, he summarized a phenomenon that manifested itself in a number of poets under the name “Gelehrte Lyrik” (Scholarly Lyricism). The poets who gave him cause to do so were: Hermann Lingg, Wilhelm Jordan, Robert Hamerling, Victor Scheffel. It is not a negative assessment of these poets that Schröer wanted to express with this. This will be admitted even by those who disagree with this assessment in many ways.

But what Schröer wanted, he expresses sharply in the following words: “If the poets whose works I allowed to be called erudite lyric almost seem to us like testimonies to an age suffering from over-education, it cannot be denied that among the ones mentioned, Hamerling is certainly the one who still has the most in him of the true poet. Indeed, in its seeds, the new education and learning sprout with the last lyric poet we have to deal with, with Victor Scheffel."

Schröer sensed the pressure that “erudite education” exerted on the free momentum of poetic imagination at the time he was writing his observations.

One certainly cannot say that Victor Scheffel wanted to embody “erudition” in his poetry. Nor would one necessarily find it in the other poets mentioned. Least of all in Robert Hamerling.

But Schröer nevertheless points to something that is significant for the past fifty years.

The phrase “for an age suffering from over-education” is particularly striking. It refers to an age in which the forces of decline are already present, and under whose influence humanity must live in the present. And it is precisely these seeds that Schröer senses when he speaks of “over-education”. He senses that there is something in the direction that intellectual education has taken that separates man from the inner sources of life and the world. In saying this, he points back to Goethe, who still carries nature and the world close to his heart.

It is the pressure that arose from the striving for knowledge of that time that puts the words on Schröer's tongue. What has often been said in this weekly magazine may be repeated from a different point of view. One can fully recognize the great achievements of natural knowledge, which that time mastered without limitation; but this must not scare away the insight that the way of thinking that has emerged with these achievements in the development of humanity includes forces of decline. And Schröer sees this when he speaks of the suffering of his time due to “over-education”. He sees how there is only more trust in that activity of the soul that directs the mind to natural processes, insofar as these natural processes reveal themselves through the senses. This results in a content of the soul that, in Schröer's opinion, paralyzes the power of poetry.

Of course it does not have to be that way. And anyone who says, “Yes, should we then, in order not to disturb the poets, renounce the ‘objectivity’ of true knowledge?” is quite right from his point of view. But the thinking that resulted from this “true knowledge” pushed everywhere to recognize its own limitations. “Objectivity” was only found when one adhered to the ‘limits of the knowledge of nature’. Whoever says: this is how much science can recognize, and whoever strives for more is seeking ways beyond the ‘limits of the knowledge of nature’ and will have a beneficial effect. But whoever decrees: knowledge of nature must be accepted unconditionally; it has a right to determine the limits of knowledge in general, brings about ideas through this way of thinking that affect the soul habits of man. And this effect is one that extinguishes everything that arises freely from the soul to reveal itself in human creations of the spirit.

But it is these free human creations that are connected with the nature of man himself. They are the powers transformed into the spiritual, which work in the growth, in the shaping, in the whole formation of the physical man as well. In the free creation of the spirit, man lets that which the world powers bring to life come forth from his soul in a different form, by letting him himself emerge from the mother soil of existence into manifestation. Man can never understand his own nature if he sees in himself a collection of what nature itself allows him to recognize.

The response that is often made is not justified. Those who have adopted the common orientation towards mere natural events believe that they are approaching human beings in order to view them as impartially as nature. But he has not. He has taken into his soul the ideas of nature with their limitations as habits of thought, and these he transfers to man. He believes he is looking at the latter; in truth, the hallucination of a spectre stands before his soul, which he has composed of natural substances and natural forces; and the true human essence falls away from view.

With this hallucination before his soul, man finds himself hampered wherever he would let his free spiritual power rule. He would also like to unfold spiritually in his soul what works in the depths by his own being arising; then “true knowledge” comes and whispers to him, you may do that; but you are in the airy realm of the unreal. One can now theorize that a “true insight” must be based only on itself; that imagination must go its own way, regardless of what “science” determines. But this science does flow into the soul. And it causes what Schröer calls the suffering of “overeducation”. This overeducation lies in the belief that the knowledge of nature that developed in the nineteenth century, with its orientation towards ideas, can approach the human being.

This overeducation becomes undereducation in the intellectual realm. It would be highly misleading if one had to say in truth: anyone who wants to let the human spirit rule freely is obliged to do so regardless of the “findings” of knowledge. If one then sees that free creativity is nevertheless fettered by this, one would have to assume a tragic conflict in the nature of man. One would have to believe that he can only gain knowledge if he stifles his own nature. If this were really the result of conscientious, “exact” research, man would have to resign himself to it. Anthroposophical spiritual knowledge attempts to show that this is not the case. However, it does not take the view that it must be accepted for the sake of humanity, as a kind of hypothesis. Instead, it approaches the spiritual being in the same way that science approaches the natural being. It is not a prerequisite for spiritual science that man should find harmony within himself, for the sake of which it surreptitiously gains its results; but spiritual science gains its results spiritually, just as natural science gains its results naturally. And from these results it may then look up to the harmony within man and cherish the hope that it may also be able to act on this harmony through its impulses.

The creations of Goethe and Schiller during their time as friends are among the most beautiful blossoms of human intellectual life. However, this friendship only came about because both men overcame serious inner obstacles that kept their souls apart. These obstacles can be seen in the conversation reported by Goethe, which the two had when they had once come from a lecture on the plant world that had taken place at the Naturalists' Society in Jena. Schiller found that the lecture was unsatisfactory because the individual plant forms were juxtaposed without the context becoming apparent in the consideration. Goethe replied that he had such a context in mind in his Urpflanze (primordial plant), which contains what lives as the essence in all individual plants. This “Urpflanze” does not resemble a single plant; but it makes every plant understandable from this primordial form that underlies the entire plant kingdom. Goethe sketched this primal form with a few characteristic strokes in front of Schiller's eyes. Schiller replied: but that is not an experience, that is an idea. Goethe, however, insisted that for him such an idea was at the same time an experience (observation), and that if one called such an idea an idea, he perceived his ideas with his eyes. From Goethe's description of the conversation, it is clear that the two of them had not yet been able to reconcile their opinions.

Goethe felt justified in addressing what formed itself in his mind about the things of nature in the form of ideas, as a result of observation, as he did, for example, about the red color of the rose. For him, science was spirit-filled and yet at the same time the objective result of observation. Schiller could not come to terms with such a view. For him, it was clear that man must first form the ideas out of himself if he wanted to combine the results of observation, which were only given as details. Goethe felt at home in nature with his spiritual content, while Schiller felt out of touch with nature with the same content.

Anyone who follows the course of their friendship from their correspondence will see how it deepened as Schiller came to understand Goethe's way of looking at things. He came to accept the objective rule of the spirit in the creations of nature, which was something that Goethe took for granted. It may be said that Schiller was the first to separate from Goethe the view that man stands outside nature and that when he speaks about nature, he adds something to it. Goethe was never unclear about the fact that in man nature expresses its essence as spiritual content itself, if man only puts himself in the right relationship to it.

For Goethe, the essence of nature lives in man as knowledge. And human knowledge is for him a revelation of the essence of nature. For Goethe, the process of knowledge is not merely a formal reflection of a hidden essence in nature, but the real manifestation of that which would not exist in nature at all without the human spirit. Nevertheless, for him, the spirit is the true content of nature itself, because he conceives of knowledge as the human soul immersing itself in nature. Schiller initially found it difficult to reconcile this with his Kantianism. And he had adopted this Kantianism; Goethe never found anything in Kant's view that could come close to his way of thinking.

In the feeling of Goethe's artistic creations, Schiller found himself in his way of thinking and approached Goethe more and more. In the “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” one sees Schiller's striving to bring Goethe's artistic experience to full understanding. After he had reformed himself in this direction, he came to recognize in the artistic experience of the world the only human state of mind in which one could be a true human being in the full sense of the word. And so, for him, science became a way of experiencing the world in which man could not reveal himself in his entirety.

Goethe, on the other hand, wanted a science that, in its own way, would bring out the whole person just as art does in its own. Schiller first had to work his way towards such a view. He did so, and in doing so, his spiritual community with Goethe was placed on the right footing. Goethe, in turn, approached Schiller in that Schiller provided him with the intellectual justification for his way of thinking. He himself could not have arrived at this, for he lived in this way before the bond of friendship, as in something self-evident, which had not even occurred to him as a problem. Schiller was able to enrich Goethe's soul by showing him how it could become a self-aware mystery and search for the solution to it.

Schiller gave Goethe the incentive to continue his Faust. The “Prologue in Heaven” was created directly from this stimulus. If you compare this with one of the oldest Faust scenes, where Faust turns away from the spirit of the great world and towards the spirit of the earth, you can see the turnaround in Goethe. Before, the turning away from the intellectual content of the great world; after, the pictorial representation of the same. In the stimulus of thought that Schiller had given, lay for Goethe the germ of the artistic image of man's life in the world-spirit before the eye of the soul. Before, he was unable to do this because he accepted this life as something only felt as a matter of course, without forming it inwardly.

For posterity, it will always be significant to be able to learn to see Goethe's essence with the eye of the soul through Schiller; to see Goethe's essence fully unfold in a certain period of his life in the stimuli that emanate from Schiller.

The sense of the obstacles that both had to overcome in order to come together, and the other of the way in which they ultimately complemented each other, provides an impulse for the deepest soul observations. In doing so, however, he also penetrates to one of the most important points in the workings of the spirit in the development of humanity.

The Kommende-Tag-Verlag has republished FTenrik Steffen's “Anthropology”, which was first published a hundred years ago.

This brings a work back to the public that vividly reveals the life of scientific knowledge in Goethe's time. It cannot be said to reflect the generally accepted view of nature in this period. Steffens was far too individual and original a personality to capture the spirit of the times in a book in this way. But what such a personality gains from the knowledge of nature in the spirit of his time in order to approach the riddles of man comes to light.

Henrik Steffens is a Norwegian. He started out by studying mineralogy. At the age of twenty-four, he went to Germany, to the intellectual atmosphere in which Goethe had breathed the creations of his soul. Goethe's spirit became the awakening force for Steffens.

Steffens continued his studies in Jena, where philosophy in one form or another had reached the heights that Goethe sought to scale by other means. Schelling, who expounded natural philosophy as a creative spirit, for whom the comprehension of nature was followed by the comprehension of its secrets, had a profound influence on him. Werner, the geognost, whom Goethe also followed to a certain point, became his guide. Steffens' soul was carried by Fichte's and Schiller's philosophical ideas, and inspired by Novalis' bold penetration into the spirit of natural activity.

And so all the impulses that were at work in German intellectual life at that time converged in this soul. From them he wanted to bring light into the natural scientific insights that had received such powerful stimuli at that time from the burgeoning science of chemistry, from the theory of electricity and much more.

Anyone who allows Schelling's natural philosophy to take effect on them has the impression that a personality is speaking that wants to soar in a daring flight of ideas to the ultimate riddles of existence, and that, in its flight, takes with it, interpreting and combining, whatever scientific results can be grasped from left and right. It seeks to obtain from nature justifications for the flight of ideas. Nature must serve the architectonics of ideas.

Fichte is so completely absorbed in the flight of ideas that he has no eye or interest in natural science at all.

Goethe, with vivid and vivid power of thought, recreates the details of natural things and processes in thought; he will not be moved to a final summary; his respect for the depth of the world's secrets is too great for that.

Novalis strikes sparks of genius out of nature, which he wants to bring together to form his “magical idealism”. He dies much too young to complete the whole of the powerful ideas he has in mind.

All these minds have the one-sidedness that often occurs in people who carry strong a&five souls within them.

In Steffens, the passive, the devoted receptivity of the soul predominates. He absorbs what emanates from Fichte, Schelling, Goethe, Novalis; and he develops versatile abilities in which the powers of these spirits flow together. In this harmony of abilities, he approaches natural processes with unlimited love. He gives back to nature in recognition of what he has learned from his great role models in spiritual striving, in that they wanted to rise above nature to the sources of existence.

And so he follows mineralogically and geologically what slate formations and what limestone formations the earth carries in its rock structure. He seeks to fathom the harmony of magnetic and electrical processes. He endeavors to guess the riddles of gravity and light. And from all this he wants to gain a picture of how the earth is born out of the cosmos under the influence of gravity and light, of magnetism and electricity. How these forces shape its slate-limestone-porphyritic body. And in this cosmic birth, which then develops further, he seeks the formative elements of living beings up to the human being.

Thus, in his soul, “anthropology” is born.

This becomes a comprehensive edifice of ideas. The earth's formations form the basis. The unraveling of the human existence forms the uppermost storey. The formations of the human sensory tools are treated with just as much spirit as the gneiss that helps shape the mountain structure. This consideration of 'anthropology' does not stop at the point where the natural foundations of the human being are grasped by the soul and spirit. It penetrates to the temperaments, to the life of love.

Indeed, in this consideration it seems self-evident that the cognitive revelation that man receives from nature leads to the religious state of mind. And so we read on the penultimate page of this “Anthropology”: “This revelation of the eternal personality of God, the Son from eternity, the true archetype, the inner fullness of all law, from the very beginning, was the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. His veiled personality was from the beginning and looks out of nature as a hint of future bliss.”

And for Steffens, it “looks out of nature” because he shapes science in such a way that knowledge is the unveiling of the spirit hidden in nature. He does not anthropomorphically place the spirit into nature; he lets nature itself express its spirit. But this spirit ultimately reveals itself in the way Steffens suggests.

It is certain that this “anthropology” cannot be read like a book written today. Steffens would also write differently according to the scientific discoveries that have been made since then.

But one should read about the relationship between the human soul and nature and its work a century ago in one of its brilliant representatives. One may feel that Steffen's description is outdated, but one should also have a feeling for the fact that the saying should also become outdated: these natural philosophers constructed only out of thin air, without any basis in experience. And it is fortunate that they have been “overcome” and “forgotten”. — One should rather see how these “overcome” and “forgotten” still have a great deal of vitality in them that could also benefit the present and the near future.

From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the abundance of what had been discovered in the world of the senses had caused thinkers to lose the courage to seek the spirit in nature. But in return, they have conjured up a state of the sciences, through which they have completely lost sight of the essence of man. For a science that stops at the spirit must lose the human being himself, because nature lives in man as the spirit shapes it.

Steffens has just endeavored to gain a real “anthropology” in which the essence of man lives. He was able to develop such an understanding because he created a natural foundation in his knowledge, into which the human spirit can intervene and continue its laws. But the newer ones have gained such a “nature” from their knowledge that should shape the human being itself, if it wanted to have him. It cannot do that because the human being is not “nature”.

Thus it may well be seen as something that justifies itself, that one of the most brilliant works on man, which was written a century ago, is being brought to mind again today. It will become clear to many as they read that, in response to those who say that a personality like Steffens has been “forgotten” because science has passed him by, one must assert the opposite: No, Steffens must be brought back to memory because he has much that science has lost by stepping over him.

From the book by Croce, one can clearly see how the way of thinking in the present day still prevents even outstanding minds from gaining the right access to Goethe's work. Among the various obstacles that arise for such minds, the misunderstanding of Goethe's relationship to mathematics is one of the most effective. From this it can be seen that Goethe had no skill in the treatment of mathematical problems. He himself admitted his inability in this respect sufficiently strongly. In his scientific works, therefore, one never finds the problems worked out in those areas in which a mathematical treatment is required by the nature of the subject.

Now, in the period that followed Goethe, mathematical treatment was regarded as essential for those parts of knowledge of nature that are considered to be truly exact. It was under the same impression that Kant had been under when he expressed the view that there is only as much real science in any knowledge as mathematics is contained in it. For this way of thinking, the rejection of Goethe's scientific approach is sealed from the outset.

But when it comes to assessing Goethe's relationship to mathematics, something quite different comes into play.

The study of mathematics gives a person a special position in relation to the penetration of the cognitive tasks themselves. In mathematical thinking, one deals with something that arises within the human soul. One does not look outwards, as in sensory experience, but builds up the content of thought purely within. And by thinking one's way from one mathematical structure to another, one does not have to rely on the evidence of the senses or of external experimentation, but remains entirely within one's inner soul life; one is dealing with an inner, conceptual view. One lives in the realm of the freely creative spirit.

Novalis, who was equally at home in the field of mathematics as in that of the free creative poetic imagination, saw in the former a perfect imaginative creation.

In more recent times, however, this trait has been denied in mathematics. It has been thought that this field of knowledge also borrows its truths from sensory observation, like an external experimental science, and that this fact is merely beyond human attention. It was only believed that one formed the mathematical forms oneself because one did not become aware of the borrowing from external observation. But this view has arisen only out of prejudice, which refuses to admit any free activity of the human mind. We are willing to accept scientific certainty only where we can rely on the statements of sense observation. And so, because the certainty of its truths cannot be denied, mathematics is also said to be a sense science.

Because in mathematics we live in the realm of the free creative spirit, its essence can be most clearly seen in inner self-knowledge. If one turns one's attention away from the structures that one works out in mathematical activity and back to that activity itself, one becomes fully aware of what one is doing. Then one lives in a kind of free creative spirituality.

One must only then summon up the flexibility of soul to extend the same creative inner activity that one unfolds in mathematics to other areas of inner experience. In this flexibility of soul lies the power to ascend to imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge, of which this weekly journal has often spoken.

In mathematics, every step one takes is inwardly transparent. One does not turn to the outside with the soul in order to determine the being of the other through the being of the one. One does, however, remain in a realm that, although created inwardly, relates to the external world through its own nature. Mathematics originates in the soul, but relates only to the non-spiritual. When the freely creative activity of the spirit ascends to the types of knowledge mentioned, however, one comes to grasp the soul itself and the realm of the world in which the soul lives.

Goethe's spiritual nature was such that he felt no need to cultivate mathematics himself. But his way of knowing was of a completely mathematical nature. He took in what concerned external nature through pure, refined observation, but then transformed it in his inner experience so that it became one with his soul, as is the case with freely created mathematical forms. Thus his thinking about nature became, in the most beautiful sense, a mathematical one. As a thinker of nature, Goethe was a mathematical spirit without being a mathematician.

He was just as open about his lack of knowledge of mathematics as he was about the mathematical direction of his way of looking at things. You can read about this in the essays that conclude his works on natural science under the title “On Natural Science in General. In this work he also stated that in all knowledge one must proceed as if one owed an account of one's findings to the strictest mathematician.

Through this direction of his quest for knowledge, Goethe was particularly predisposed to introducing a true scientific method of research into those scientific fields that cannot be determined by measure, number and weight because they are not quantitative but qualitative in nature. The opposing view wants to limit itself to what can be measured, counted and weighed, and leaves the qualitative as scientifically unattainable. It denies Goethe scientific validity because it does not see how he extends the rigor of research, which it demands where actual mathematics is applicable, to fields of knowledge where this is no longer the case.

Only when Goethe's methods of thought can be truly understood in this direction will it be possible to gain an unbiased judgment of the relationship between his knowledge and art. Only then will it be possible to see what the further development of his way of thinking can bring, both for art and for science.

Let us survey a few cosmological facts. Evolution is focused on the development of states of consciousness. The present state of consciousness is one stage – it is the fourth. It has been preceded by three and will be followed by three. We are now in the waking state.

The seer, looking back into the past, finds that this was preceded by a dream state; somewhat lighter than in our more highly developed animals; and duller, but more comprehensive than present-day man can imagine. This consciousness included the plant world. Man could then see life flowing through the plants, germinating, sprouting. It is something that we still find in some mediums: a duller but more comprehensive state of consciousness.

Before that, we find a state that we can call sleep trance; it is even duller and even more comprehensive; the entities were able to see not only life, but also directly pain and joy; today we can only see the gestures of it. The dream state symbolized pain and joy through form, just as dreams still symbolize today. Everything was expressed in symbolic forms in those days, and our present-day symbolizing is an atavism of the earlier state of consciousness. Even the sleep trance, this dreamless sleep consciousness, can still be studied in mediums today.

The third state of consciousness – looking backwards – is the deep trance; it is also called the induced trance. It is very rare today, but can be achieved in pathological states, and then the medium constructs chains of worlds.

So we have come to know four states of consciousness: deep trance, dreamless sleep, the dream state and waking daytime consciousness. Man has gone through these four states. What has been achieved at each stage must be summarized and passed on to the next in the bud.

This gathering together is called Pralaya, the unfolding is called Manvantara; the state of consciousness itself is called a planet.

The next state that awaits us is the psychic state, which is similar to the previous one and is associated with an expansion, but at the same time a maintenance of the waking state of consciousness. The consciousness now advances in stages: the expansion occurs, but with an alert daytime consciousness. This is the development of the clairvoyant. All the theosophical teachings come from this expanded state of daytime consciousness. This psychic state of consciousness now grants the clairvoyant insight into the beautiful life stream that can be seen flowing through all plants; it can be seen when you subtract the plant, it can best be compared to the color of a peach blossom and can also be seen in humans, only - clouded by Kama.

The next super-physical consciousness extends to all sensations, to pain and feelings. The clairvoyant learns to see them when he can see the astral body – and also the lower mental world.

The highest spiritual state of consciousness provides insight into the higher mental world and extends to the planets.

Thus, all further development is based on seven states of consciousness.

Each state of consciousness has seven life stages to go through. These are also called the seven kingdoms. They are: the first, the second, the third elementary kingdom, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal kingdom and the human kingdom.

The physical body has already passed through the seven stages, the astral body will only penetrate them in the next round.

The passage through a realm is called a round.

Each state of life must again pass through seven states of form.

Between each state of life and the next there is another small pralaya.

The form states are designated as arupa (the actually still formless, only striving for development), rupa, astral, physical, plastic, intellectual, archetypal. The seventh state is the result of the six preceding ones; after the chela has been able to form himself plastically and intellectually, he creates, as it were, the skeleton to which the following can attach themselves, which in turn has to shoot out of the germ. It is the archetype.

Beyond the spiritual state of consciousness is the mastery; the spiritual state of consciousness is the highest that the chela can reach, in which he can see over all the others. After that, the mastery begins for him.

Our present physical state would shine for the clairvoyant in a color that most resembles a beautiful green; the astral state in a bright yellow; the rupa-form state in orange; the arupa-form state in rose red. The color tones of the future phases are blue, indigo, violet.

In the esoteric language, the preceding planets are called the “moon” and the sun.

The state of consciousness that man reached on the moon gave a result, as did the previous one; the first state of consciousness gave the deepest result.

The mystic finds within himself what he saw spread around him; what is now our inner life was once all around us; what our life with the world is now will later be our inner life; we have to assimilate everything. Our entire outer nature will fade away, but it will become inner life. What is spread out is called evolution, what is gathered together is called 'involution.

Thus, the mystic will find the earlier stages of expansion within himself when he delves into himself. The result of these earlier stages is ego-consciousness; the earth has the task of developing this ego-consciousness - Ahamkara the Indian calls it.

The ability to perceive is linked to the third state of consciousness, that of dream sleep; the mystic experiences it again, swimming directly in the stream of life, and he experiences it to an increased degree, since he transfers his present day consciousness to that state. The Indian calls this state Chita, the mystic language calls it “the waters, the sea of life”; Suso, Ruysbroek, Böhme - speak of a “merging in the heavenly tincture,” of a “tasting of life” - through direct insight into earlier states, which are found again in the depths of consciousness. It is a wandering back in time, not in space.

If you go back even further, you will find a state of consciousness that is only known to the chela who has maintained the continuity of consciousness even through sleep. The laws of nature are the only thing you can grasp from this state of consciousness. Today they are present in the rudimentary manas; manas is what is left of it. The chela perceives thoughts in a state of deep sleep – devachan. This state is created by raising the dreamless sleep to consciousness. The Indian calls it

The last state of consciousness, in which everything that can be seen in the rounds and planetary development is experienced, is deification or union with God, in fact: union with the primal creative power of a cosmos. “Mokscha” is what the Indian calls it. The chela only reaches it immediately before adeptness. What flashes up in man is not only the perception of thoughts, but also of the ‘I’. It is a merging with humanity; it is the realization: Budhi. That teaching, which has flowed out of the conscious seeing of Budhi, is therefore called ‘Esoteric Buddhism’.

We have thus become acquainted with the states of consciousness just described under the names: Ahamkara, Chita, Jujuksha or Manas, Mokscha or Budhi.

Through Ahamkara, man becomes aware of himself.

Through Chita, he becomes aware of the expressions of the beings around him.

Through manas, he becomes aware of the inner life of beings.

Through budhi, of the essence of the beings around him.

This continuous thread of development, which takes the states of consciousness through 343 stages, we call the Pitri.

How does evolution take place? One has a sum of circles of existence that are internalized later. This is the case throughout the universe.

Let us now consider the development of man. His physical body is fully developed in the present race. But the astral body of man is at present in an undeveloped period. It must develop to the point where it has sensory organs, like the physical body. These sensory organs, which will allow man to live consciously on the astral plane, are called chakras. These are in the appendix today. One sits above the larynx and is called the sixteen-petalled lotus flower because of its shape. It is formed by the person speaking today. An organ on the higher plane arises from an activity on the lower plane. This is also referred to in the third verse of 'Licht auf den Weg'. This is a guide. All those words that contain criticism, judgment, rejection, and barbs directed outwards do not contribute to setting the wheel in motion. So only selfless speech can make this organ effective on the higher plane. So that it is not asceticism, withdrawal from the physical plane, that makes the theosophist, but working on it. When our service becomes sacrifice, the two-petalled lotus blossom on the forehead is set in motion.

Everything that is, is the result of activity or karma. — How did eyes come about? Man had to carry out an activity that led to the formation of the eyes. The now rudimentary pineal gland was a kind of heat organ, like a mobile eye, when the bodies were not yet glowing and man moved in a mist of fire. He used it to probe the environment and could perceive temperature differences in a wide circle. The result of this perception is the perception of such bodies that glow when heated. Then this organ receded and the two eyes formed as a result. The Cyclops saga is a reminder of this.

It is clear to us how grandiose the metamorphoses are that man has undergone: they must take place in such a way that the outer formation of form becomes inner strength.

We are in the fourth round. When man came over from the moon, he was generally Moon Pitri. He had brought dream consciousness to its highest development. This was unable to perceive an object that was outside. Such an object was not even there. For that to happen, one object would have had to be opposite the other. The first three rounds were such that everything was internal, man was secluded within himself. The Pitris carried all available matter within themselves, there were only humans. If man had kept the mineral kingdom within himself, he would never have developed. Therefore, he had to put it out of himself. In the first round, he separates everything he cannot use out of himself; by leaving behind a lower being, he rises up. That is a deep law of occultism.

During the second round, he populates his earth with the plant kingdom; during the third round, he leaves behind everything that is cold-blooded. Now that sleeps over into the fourth round as a germ. He goes through the arupa, rupa and astral state and enters the thinnest physicality. As he is, he could not become intelligent, he still has to shed one thing, and these are the warm-blooded animals, they are, so to speak, decadent, stunted people.

By the middle of the Lemurian period, development had progressed to the point where the following could occur. Until then, a being could emerge from another being; sexual reproduction did not exist. Back then, when all beings reproduced asexually, the earth was in a completely different state. Everything that was solid mass was dissolved at that time, liquid element. The change brought about what we call sexual reproduction. Sexuality is connected with hardening; one being could no longer produce another on its own, so even molluscs had to adapt to the new conditions.

How did sexuality arise? A measure of strength -<1> let's call it that — was necessary to bring forth a new being. This is not possible through hardening. 1 is split into 2, half of the force goes into reproduction, the other half is split off. One half condenses into the brain, becomes spiritual, and is thus ennobled reproductive force, the other half becomes more brutal as a result. These are the two poles.

The split-off power, the spiritual, could be fertilized by Manas and became the carrier of Manas. That is why symbols were taken from the sexual to symbolize the highest. When later races came, the pure symbols were misunderstood and also led to excesses. Material science, which only starts from the physical plan, has only seen this.

This spiritual power, before it reached the phase where we are today, went through many phases. At first, the imagination was much more imbued with full sensual ideas; it was not yet diluted enough to live as memory, and it had magical power, could have a reproducing effect with appropriate training. The merely sensual part of man was hardened in a rough way, and then the productive power took effect. He had to give this up to the extent that he developed higher. The memory was what developed during the Atlantean period, and the power of reason during the Aryan race. Thus, power waned at the expense of refinement.

The purpose of evolution is that a higher level develops while a lower one is left behind. Thus we have left behind the wild peoples from whom, erroneously, the cultural history derives us.

Now, after the higher animal kingdom has been rejected, we are in the middle of the fourth round. Man must gradually take up again everything he has previously rejected; he must redeem everything. In the astral state he will be able to do so. The entire extended higher animal kingdom consists of the passions that man has externalized. With the more powerful organs of the developed, purified astral body, he can take up the externalized power again and use it to elevate himself. That is the development of the three future globes. So that when our development is complete, the higher animal kingdom, which has a mineral structure, will no longer be; the whole mineral kingdom will be absorbed.

So during the fifth round, only the plant kingdom, the lower animal kingdom and man himself are there. He now absorbs the plant kingdom and the higher part of the lower animal kingdom. It is a different physical state, the mineral kingdom will not be, but the plant will have an even denser physical state. There is no volatilization into the ether, but a physicalization of the plant. It will be a growing skeleton with secretions of a plant-like nature. Certain substances that are still air today will be water in which germs can swell.

When the sixth round begins, only the animal kingdom will be there, and that will be the advanced, now lower, forms, and man. The animal kingdom will be absorbed. And in the seventh round, man will reach Godlikeness. God rests on the seventh day. Man is creator and develops to that maturity which is necessary to start a new development.

I now want to expand my view to include all seven planets, our entire planetary chain.

A physical state must occur on each planet; all earlier ones are preparations for this, all later ones are discharges. They prepare the matter into which the physical can then flow. The etheric body belongs to the physical, is the refinement of it. We have, as is well known, to think of physical matter in seven aggregate states, of which the ether is in four; thus: solid, liquid, gas and the corresponding etheric states.

The physical state in the middle with its solid forms is enveloped and permeated by the astral aura. There is an essential difference between this aura before and after physical development. Before, it is dependent on the forces that act on it from the outside; it is cosmic. The physical development must organize it from within. It manifests itself – separate from the physical body – roughly in the shape of a ring, at least that is how it appears to the ordinary clairvoyant. But it is a ring that has been created by two vortices, two spirals, intertwining; seemingly disappearing into nothing, they are suspended, as it were, on the threads of the universe.

By mastering thoughts and feelings, the human being becomes independent, as it were, cutting himself off; the chakras develop at the center of the two vortices, as it were on the axis. So one can say that the essential purpose of physical life is to have one's center within oneself, instead of being pulled by strings in the universe. When the astral body descends after the physical state, it has the result of this within itself.

So each round works out the self. The first round works out the mineral, the second the vegetable, the third the kamic or animal, the fourth the real self.

Before that, the matters are prepared, afterwards they descend, and this process is repeated on each planet.

The foundation for the original planet was the result of an earlier planetary development. The beings had developed the deep trance consciousness. They are the human monads, the Pitris. They were originally there. These beings began to become objective to themselves. To understand this, imagine yourself one night transported to a completely different celestial sphere, with an erased memory. You would not be able to identify yourself in this new environment. This would only be possible if you had retained all your memory, but not if it was lost and the environment was different.

This gives you the difference between objective and subjective. For the first time, the very subjective beings must now come to an objectivity; they must mirror themselves, look at something. And that is the task of the first planet. As one stone bumps into the other, so to speak, the first dull consciousness comes. So that the essential thing is that the subjective Pitris have each lost themselves in another. In esoteric language, this moment is called 'descending into the abyss'. That is, they become objective, have a second self outside of themselves.

Figuratively speaking, they come to the stage of a ball or egg in the physical. The original point is an egg or a ball in the reflection.

The planet is then extremely thin and consists of spheres. You could say that it looks like a big blackberry. Everything is swirling around; man himself is a mineral in a spiritual material form; it is a rapid arising and passing away, like soap bubbles. Everything is mobile in itself.

What is experienced during the following six rounds is an inundation of these first impressions, a consolidation of this state.

The second planet already has a pralaya between itself and the first; and each of these beings already enters with a special experience. For example, there was already a difference in spatial orientation, there was a north pole and a south pole. These experiences are now coming out.

During the first stage, there is a brief repetition, and a higher state of consciousness has to find its way into the earlier experiences. During this second stage, ordering by number, measure, weight and harmony begins. Mental development begins. So the spheres, which previously did not differ, now begin to express their experiences through different proportions. This is the first rudimentary development of the plant kingdom; the beings arrange themselves in such a way that they face each other in threes and fours, in fours and fours, and so on. Everything in the world in terms of number, measure, weight and harmony originated at that time and only changed in the following stages. Man is a plant; the legends that allude to this origin have their source here. This is a beautiful world, in the chaste form of the plant kingdom. Esoterically, this planet is called the “Sun” or “Jupiter”. It is a paradisiacal state of real innocence; that is why the description of this state is one that always fills the initiate with sacred awe.

The following states or rounds are there to reinforce and to subside. All that we have in the way of crystal forms and plant species originated in the layout at that time.

On the moon planet, after a pralaya, we are again dealing with a brief repetition of the two conditions, and only with the third does the new emerge: the condition of beings that develop into desire, into the Kamischen, which not only arranges itself with others, but desires them. This is where unchastity begins; the number does not place itself next to the other in order to be beautiful, but desires it. The two desires the three. Chemical affinities arise, we stand in elective affinities.

Then the flooding follows: the astral states develop. Particularly strong ones give the impression – when you put yourself in them – of glowing, incubating. It is the feeling of being surrounded by the glow of passion; the air that surrounds you is passion, the wind is blowing passion.

Those who were not initiated to a higher level, who did not know that this is only a point of passage, rightly described this world as a demonic world, as hell. It makes sense, then, to speak of 'hellfire'. We find the same thing, albeit cooled, in the lower regions of the astral world, and it is therefore rightly said that people's strongest enemies are there. — The following rounds were intended to absorb this: the glowing passions were absorbed; what used to be atmosphere was absorbed into the beings. They became passion-beings – Kamawesen, Mondpitris – the entities that formed these things.

They naturally had the opportunity to remain at each of the following levels, so there are seven classes of Pitris, the highest of whom have reached the final phase of refined Kama development, of noble, purified Kama. Those of the fifth stage, for example, have already directed their passions towards higher things, towards something that resembles fanaticism, for example; or those of the sixth have the passion for beauty as their disposition; those of the seventh: the passion for good. - The calmly contemplative manas is missing.

Manas now enters the fourth planet, our Earth. The three previous states, the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal round are repeated, because man must now discard what he cannot use to advance in his development; in the fourth round, the new state of consciousness only emerges, the bright consciousness of day. Something completely new is emerging. The mineral, vegetable and animal nature has been cast off. Warm-bloodedness arises as a result of the passions, and the power that absorbs the new is retained.

The descent continues until the third race; the Atlantean race is right in the middle, the Aryan race is in the ascent. During the

During the Lemurian race, Manas was, as it were, placed in the seething mass of Kama and there tried to gain existence, in order to develop later in the Atlantean race as memory; this continuous thread of Manas attaches itself in the fifth race to intellectual combination; Manas is now working within itself.

During the sixth root race, which will replace our Aryan one, the working-in of Manas will continue to proceed. The chakras, the mental organs, and the human ego will develop during the following round.

How does such a development take place? What happens during an initiation? No body can develop beyond its environment; the physical body is dependent on physical powers; man, as a physical being, cannot develop beyond himself. But he can develop his astral body so that he becomes at home in the knowledge of what we call the astral life. He will get to know the origins of evil that lie there. In this way, he has become an artificial fifth rounder. But a certain discrepancy must occur in him, because in a normal further development his physical body would also have become different. He must either renounce what now constitutes life, or there will be a certain discord.

During the fifth round, they can then act as teachers and guides for the fifth round of humanity, just as they already do for the fourth round of humanity. Such fifth-rounders can reach far beyond the present development; but if they are still at the beginning and not at the highest level of fifth-roundership, they will seem like dreamers to others. These are the geniuses who, when they intervene in practical life, act as reformers. Cromwell could be cited as an example. If they are in the middle, they can give us such profound teachings as Goethe; or if they have reached the pinnacle and are already ripe for the sixth round, such as Heraclitus or Plato. Humanity can only progress if such artificial five-rounders take on a human form.

The artificial six-rounder consists of gaining complete clarity about the mental world. A complete insight into the interrelationships, the creative forces of the world, is provided by a leader like Buddha. All that remains for him to do is to complete his mental body; he is completely free in the astral and physical. A six-rounder like this can almost reach the point of attaining human godlikeness. However, this is not possible with the current average body. Such a body must be slowly prepared through chelaship so that the God of our Earth can take possession of this body in later life. Such a process occurred in the third race when the chela Sig made his body available to an artificial seven-rounder. This was even more the case when the chela Jesus of Nazareth, in his thirtieth year, placed his body at the disposal of the Christ principle, the God-Man. It is only in the sixth root race that humanity will be ready for a seven-rounder who has passed through all the stages of humanity to fill the human body with the Christ principle expressed in it. [...]